Tag: Float Mobile Learning

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Flash Technology gone in a mobile….no, wait–that’s not quite right…

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

In the mobile technology wars, it’s been a war between the technology of Adobe Flash versus HTML 5. This has been a long going–at least in Internet years–battle royale that has been going on for a while, but it appears that a break has finally happened.

Recently, Adobe made the decision to end the support of Adobe Flash in Google’s latest Android OS, aka “Jelly Bean.” The significance of this is huge.  To some, this is a surprise. To others, it is not.

Flash has been the driving force of web animation for a couple decades now on many websites globally. It is a huge part of Adobe’s repertoire, and yet… Flash has had a difficult time making it into the mobile realm.  Just in the desktop/laptop realm, a Flash player can be rather unwieldy. There seemed to be only one flavor of Flash made for 32-bit machines, and not for 64-bit machines (like my own) which are becoming more commonplace.  Flash programming is an art unto itself as well. As much as many employers want people to have Flash backgrounds as technical communicators, I’ve also been told by developers to not bother learning it unless I really was dying to know, because it was rather complex even for the experienced developer to use, and developing Flash was time consuming.

This was all brought to the forefront about two years ago by the late Steve Jobs who said that Flash would not last, and that HTML5 was the future. He believed this so much that all of Apple’s new mobile products supported HTML5 from the get-go, but not Flash.  Aaron Silvers reminded me of this when he posted this article from Business Insider, STEVE JOBS WINS: Adobe’s Ditching Flash, today on Twitter. It’s been a huge deal as iPhones and iPads proliferated with HTML5-friendly browsers, and didn’t support Flash, while other browsers for other tablets, like the Kindle, Nook and other Android-based tablets and phones did.

Adobe’s had a hard time with this, as far as I could see. Just for the record, I love Apple products, but I also love my Adobe products as well, so it’s been a tough debate to follow. I actually wrote a case study about it just several months ago about it, entitled, A Case Study: HTML 5 versus Flash, which discussed the history of this debate and what actions I saw Adobe–as a company–trying to make to work within this new environment that was pushing HTML5. At the time of the writing, Steve Jobs had just passed–literally within days of when I wrote my first draft and final draft of the paper–and so much was out in the media about the great Steve Jobs and how he was the mastermind that he was. I still love Steve Jobs, but after all, he was still human and fallible,  so I wanted to show how Adobe countered his attacks against Flash. In the end, the conclusion at the time was that HTML5 was the future, but it wasn’t completely NOW (or at that moment). HTML5 needed more development, and in the meantime, Adobe would adjust with the HTML5 revolution with its work on the Adobe Edge product and bringing that capability to its development products, but in the meantime, Flash was still working on most of the machines in the world, and there was no reason to stop working on that as well.

The way I saw it, Adobe’s point was that you don’t just abandon a long standing technology that’s worked so well overnight, just because the next best thing is starting to come along. It’s like abandoning DVDs just because Blu-Ray disks are out. There has to be some sort of legacy transition, and until HTML5 was more mature and used by those other than the developers at Apple, it didn’t make sense to abandon Flash altogether. But in the meantime, time needed to be taken to start working with the new medium and figure out the best way to move forward.

Fast forward to now, about six to eight months after I wrote the case study above. Mobile technology continues to explode on the market, and the race is on to be the dominant technological mobile device with new tablets and smartphones being introduced.  RJ Jacquez posted this article that came out today on Twitter: Adobe: Web standards match 80 percent of Flash features. Arno Gourdol, Adobe’s senior director of Web platform and authoring, was quoted at the Google I/O show, referring to HTML5’s capabilities at this stage, “I think it’s close to 80 percent.”  Seeing the writing on the wall, it’s obvious, after reading the rest of the article, that Adobe has been making efforts to keep up with HTML5, and make forward progress on using the web standard. Adobe’s not quite there either in keeping up, but it seems that it’s starting to make significant progress in this direction.

So, where does this leave us in the mobile learning world? As I see it, this is another means towards single-sourcing for learning. Flash has been good, there is no doubt. Some of the most interactive e-learning and m-learning sites (depending on your device’s capabilities) have been Flash driven, and so much has been Flash driven for years that Flash capabilities and interactivity are expected. In speaking with my e-learning developer husband about the topic, he said that Flash, while complicated at times, was easier to develop than HTML5, because HTML5 depended not only on new HTML5 coding, but also javascript and jquery much more than before to have content play the same way–or at least similarly–to Flash. From the sounds of things, those similarities are getting closer and closer. How soon will HTML5 be a true standard in the same way as standard HTML has been all these years? Probably sooner than later, but I see it as a big step towards that single-sourcing solution that will help eliminate the idea of problems with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). No one will have to worry whether something will work on an Android, Windows or iOS device. It will just work because they all use HTML5.

This is an important issue to follow, because it’s not the mobile technological devices that need to be watched as much as how they will be programmed and used. Flash isn’t gone yet, but seeing what will happen with it, and where and how HTML5 progresses will be a hot issue for some time to come–so keep on top of this!

Posted in mobile, singular experience, Uncategorized

Project Tin Can: Good Communication or just a Tin Can Alley?

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

Something I’ve been hearing about lately is something called, “Project Tin Can,” and it’s been a topic that seems to come back again and again in reference to m-learning. “Oh, I think great strides are being made with ‘Tin Can’,” or “I think ‘Tin Can’ might help to solve that problem in how it relates to m-learning,” I’d hear. I knew it has to do with how scoring and assessments are done, but what is it beyond that? Why should I even begin to pay attention to this?

Of course, I had to start doing some research, because if this is a hot topic that affects m-learning, I need to be on top of it, right?

First, if one doesn’t have an understanding of SCORM, one has to understand that first.  SCORM, for all you technical communicators that don’t know, is best explained by Rustici Software, which works very closely with the ADL who set these standards:

SCORM is a set of technical standards for e-learning software products. SCORM tells programmers how to write their code so that it can “play well” with other e-learning software. It is the de facto industry standard for e-learning interoperability. Specifically, SCORM governs how online learning content and Learning Management Systems (LMSs) communicate with each other. SCORM does not speak to instructional design or any other pedagogical concern, it is purely a technical standard…. The SCORM standard makes sure that all e-learning content and LMSs can work with each other, just like the DVD standard makes sure that all DVDs will play in all DVD players. If an LMS is SCORM conformant, it can play any content that is SCORM conformant, and any SCORM conformant content can play in any SCORM conformant LMS.  (See http://scorm.com/scorm-explained/ for more details)

Okay, so we have a set of standard for e-learning so that all content can work together congruently.

Great! So, why mess with what works?

Well, SCORM was developed about a decade or so ago, and while it’s worked great, a lot has changed in how educational content is delivered. A decade ago, we didn’t have smartphones in the same way that we do now, and tablets were still thought of as either pads of paper or slabs of slate that you wrote on with chalk. Mobile devices took off in the last few years much faster than anyone anticipated.  Obviously, if there are new means of technology, there are also new means of learning and delivering learning content to learners.  ADL, the SCORM proctors, realized that they need to stay ahead of the curve and start looking new solutions as mobile technology started to integrate into daily life.

While I had heard of Tin Can, it most recently was brought to my attention by Chad Udell of Float Learning. Float Learning is hot on the trail of TinCan, as evidenced by their May 2012 newsletter. Chad posted this link on Twitter to the following article by Reuben Tozman of the edCetra Training Blog: Instructional Design Tips for Tin Can, which talks about how Reuben and his company started to use Tin Can to start using methods that had their foundations in SCORM for a project, but ultimately needed the flexibility of Tin Can to evolve and progress with the project. I also looked at this article by Ben Clark of Rustici Software, as posted by Aaron Silvers of ADL on “What is Project Tin Can?“, which basically outlined what Tin Can was in broad terms, but it wasn’t completely clear to the “lay person” like me.

The most helpful thing in helping me understand what Tin Can is was to listen to episode #7 of “This Week in M-Learning” with RJ Jacquez and Rob Gadd, which can be found either on this website or on iTunes. They had Aaron Silvers and Jason Haag of ADL as guests on the show, and being that both Aaron and Jason are very much part of and deeply into the Tin Can project, they were excellent sources to consult.

The following are the notes that I took from the conversation (and hopefully I’m summarizing and paraphrasing most of the conversation correctly–let me know if I have any inaccuracies):

First and foremost, both SCORM and TinCan API (as it’s now known) are not standards, but rather they are specifications. SCORM is a widely adopted and used specification, but it’s still just a specification, not a standard. That’s an important distinction to make up front.

From there, it was explained in the podcast that Project Tin Can started around 2008, when ADL started looking at whitepapers and various resources to determine how they were going to develop new standards within SCORM to develop a platform that could move forward rather than a specification. With social media starting to have a stronger presence in the world, especially on mobile, something was needed that wasn’t being pre-defined or pre-described yet was something that SCORM tried to addressed. For example, how could people have ubiquitous access to online data? How could a self-sustaining, open source system be created in the process to build this new specification/platform/standard using as many ideas as possible to push the evolution of the system continually into the future?

Tin Can API–the end result thusfar of that research–is a major component of tracking of learning activity in next generation of SCORM.

RJ asked a major question in the podcast, which was, “What is the big deal of Tin Can?” It’s a valid question, after all. Aaron, Jason, and Rob (who is using Tin Can at his mobile technology firm) explained that Tin Can allows for mobile SCORM tracking to work optimally, both offline as well as online. The spec is meant to help level the playing field so that the content can plug into new platforms without losing content in transfer, giving it far more flexibility and ease to help mobile technology use SCORM specs.

It was noted that the need to be simpler was key for implementation; it needed to be more flexible than SCORM, so the concept behind Tin Can is not only to use it for e-learning and m-learning, but to provide deliverables of different code libraries that go beyond online learning. It was noted that Articulate Storyline is using a simpler version of Tin Can rather than SCORM, but it’s more capable in its deliverable, and Blackboard is using a form of it as well.

Another big point was that Tin Can API can be initiated with informal training and not start with an LMS (Learning Management System). The idea is that learning not initiated with an LMS would take credentials from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Google (I believe Pinterest and Klout have these kinds of sign-ins). The idea is that by obtaining credentials from such sources, the content from a Tin Can-compliant app would already knows who you are. In other words, if you are already authenticated through a single sign-in ID, the app will be able to collect activity and log it. It was noted that not a lot of overhead to search for content, and Tin Can would allows smaller companies to do it for their projects.

So, the burden is lighter than SCORM. An LMS isn’t needed but it can integrate with an LMS; it is not specified to be a stand-alone but rather could expand the capability of any enterprise system by taking data about what you are doing in one place and allow other systems can see how you are performing, making it interoperatable and ubiquitous. Tin Can is meant to find a common ground to help look at data in context, helping disparate systems talk to each other.

As Tin Can API is a spec in early stages, it’s evolving very quickly thanks to
the project being highly community-based, in which things change quickly in weeks and months instead of over years like SCORM. Between the huge community support–slightly like crowdsourcing through specific online social media and other outlets– and getting some smaller m-learning “boutique” firms jumping in now, Tin Can is gaining great momentum. Rustici Software has been doing the research for ADL; ADL proposed what they wanted from their requirements, and Rustici were fortunate to get the job of bringing it to fruition. Aaron and Jason explained that Rustici released workable prototype that was incomplete–but workable–implementing the concept of using an activity stream in the Tin Can spec. (An example of an activity stream that they gave was Facebook’s layout.) Even after the initial project was completed, Rustici continued to build it out and offered what they did as open source, and their continued work was adopted readily by the Tin Can community.

So–the podcast was pretty informative and yield some of the best information to understand.

It seems to me that Tin Can API is still something to continue to watch, whether one is an m-learning developer, or even as an instructional designer or m-learning specialist. My impression was that Tin Can is meant to eventually go beyond m-learning and e-learning, and extend into other mobile applications as mobile technology specifications and standards evolve. Single-sourcing is a huge issue in mobile technology, and it seems to be that this is a project that is very much centered on making that happen.

For more information on Tin Can API, I recommend visiting the links above, and give a visit to http://scorm.com/tincan/.

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You make me feel like dancing…

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom


I’m feeling very excited right now.  So much so, I feel like dancing! (Don’t worry– I’ll restrain myself.) For those of you old enough to remember Leo Sayer, every time I hear the phrase, “You make me feel like dancing,” I think of him. Although the dance in my head these days is more like a Nikki Minaj/David Guetta soundtrack, but that’s neither here nor there.

Lots of things going on with TechCommGeekMom, both personally and professionally (since I consider this blog my “professional” blog).

First, I’m excited about my own academics. I just turned in my last assignment for the semester, which means that I am done doing the coursework for my Masters degree in Professional and Technical Communications! It’s been a long two and a half years, but just shy of getting the final grades and graduation, I’m done!  I’m very glad that I took the time and expense to get this degree. I’ve put a lot of hard work into this while at time juggling a stressful full-time job, being a Cub Scout den mother, and being the mother of a special needs kid. So if you don’t think you can do it, think again! It IS possible! I always wanted to get a graduate degree, but never knew what major. It’s been almost exactly 22 years since my undergraduate graduation, so there was plenty of reason to doubt that I could do it. But I’ve done it. I also know that it was worth the wait, because I not only validated many years of technical communications experience in the process, but gained a lot of new skills as well.  And who knew that I would do so well that I’d be accepted into the graduate honor society at my university? If you told me all about where I am now back when I first started this program, I would’ve told you that you were full of beans.  I’m excited to be moving forward from this experience!

Part of moving forward is also reliving some of the past, though! I’ve already made one post, but I will be posting some of my “greatest hits” from my academic blog here. While they are centered more on technical communications and editing at large rather than m-learning, I do think they provide some insight on things that all technical communicators need to keep in mind when looking at “the big picture”, no matter what specialty you work.

I’ve also added content to the ID/TC Links page now. I’ve listed links to commonly used ID and TC software as well as some of my favorite blogs and websites. If you’d like to contribute to the list, please drop me a line at techcommgeekmom@me.com.

Even though I won’t be in grad school anymore (at least for the time being…anyone know of a flexible PhD/EdD program? LOL), it’s not like I won’t be busy. I have lots of projects ahead, and lots of opportunities and chances for more opportunities. I’m looking forward to my webinar in June (register here if you haven’t already!), as well as several other projects I have on tap. If nothing else, being done with school means I can spend more time here on the blog and on Twitter! I genuinely would love any input and participation on this blog. Feel like guest blogging? Let me know! I want to create an m-learning community here where we can “talk shop” in a way that we can kick off our shoes and lounge on the couches while eating snacks-kind of way. I love a good discussion, and I love talking technology, m-learning and technical communications!

More to come, but please enjoy all the new stuff here on the site, and hopefully more great content is coming ahead!

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We are living in a Material World, but I’m a Digital Literate Girl.

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

Tonight, I found out something that totally angered me. A year ago, I had applied for a scholarship, and moved heaven and earth between full-time work, taking two grad school courses and juggling motherhood of an autistic child to get this application in. I turned it in before the deadline, and according to what I could see on the application site– which was done through Moodle–(why Moodle? I have no idea.) I saw that a total of six people had applied, and two had sent the application in after deadline. So, if you took the other four people as the eligible ones (myself being one), I had a 1 in 4 chance of getting this scholarship. Pretty good odds, I would think, right? Well, I heard nothing. A year has passed, and having heard nothing at all–not even a “Sorry, Charlie” letter or note or even an announcement saying who actually won the award. Then today, I saw an email for this year’s invitation to apply to the same scholarship. I sent a note to the person who sent the email, saying that I never heard back, and I can’t apply now since I’m about to graduate, so it’s too late, but what happened?  She wrote back and said she had no record of it. I was able to pull up the record on Moodle, and sent her the screenshots that most definitely said that I had sent in all the information needed.  Her only reply was, in so many words, “Oh, sorry. It was my first year using Moodle, and I didn’t see it there.”

As you can imagine, I’m livid. It would’ve been one thing if I genuinely lost out to one of the other three applicants, but I didn’t even have a chance because somebody was not digitally literate in the tool they were supposed to use to do their job. For all I know, I could’ve won that scholarship. I could’ve certainly used the money to help pay for part of my tuition, and the clout of having that scholarship award on my resume would’ve looked great. But no, because of someone else’s ineptitude, I didn’t even have a shot at it. If you understood the rage I have about this, I’m almost speechless (which is saying a lot coming from my big mouth).

It got me thinking about digital literacy.  I looked for a definition, and the following is what was listed on Wikipedia:

Digital literacy is the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and analyze information using digital technology. It involves a working knowledge of current high-technology, and an understanding of how it can be used. Further, digital literacy involves a consciousness of the technological forces that affect culture and human behavior. [1] Digitally literate people can communicate and work more efficiently, especially with those who possess the same knowledge and skills.

So, I feel I used the term of “digital illiterate” for this person running the scholarship correctly. She works for a place that I happen to know is technologically “hooked up”, and still… this. And I had to think about what it means to be digitally literate as well, and how it relates to my quest to be involved in m-learning.

My thinking, for better or worse, is that hopefully the use of m-learning will make people more digitally literate. I’m always amazed at how many people in the working world–especially those who work in networked and digitized offices–are not digitally literate. It’s one thing not to know how to use a particular program that’s a niche thing with that company or function, but really– not to know how to use Word? Or basics of Excel? Or how to send an email? REALLY? Maybe it’s because I’ve been into computers in one way or another for the past 30 years (I really did start when I was a kid not much older than my son!), that I always knew that I had to keep up with technology as best as I could, or else I knew I’d be left behind. In fact, during my stay-at-home-mom years, I did fall behind a little bit, and I’m still catching up professionally due to that.

With the proliferation of mobile devices, how can anyone NOT at least start to become more digitally literate? Technology is everywhere, and just using a smartphone to gain information is a form of being digitally literate. If a digital device helps you do your job better and more efficiently, and you know how to use that tool, then you are digitally literate. If you can’t be bothered to learn the technology given to you to make your job and responsibilities work correctly, then you are a digital illiterate.  If you don’t know how to use your digital tools, then you need to either learn through some means, whether m-learning, e-learning, a book or even just asking another person. Is that so much to ask? No, I don’t think so. The world is moving too fast to not keep up with these things.

So, while there are those who might be more focused on material things, like the Material Girl, I prefer to be the digital literate girl. Always doing my best to keep up with the digital tools I need to use, always trying to add new ones to my repertoire, and trying to keep up with technology so I can try to do whatever it is I’m doing better! We need less Material Girls and more Digital Literate Girls, if you ask me.

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To e (learn), or not to e(learn), mobile learning is the question.

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

[Updated 3/15/12 to include link to the webinar video.–TCGM]

Alas, poor Yorrick, I thought I knew m-learning well…

I attended a great webinar today hosted by Float Learning in which the subject of the webinar was, “Rapid Development Tools for Mobile Learning.” One of my favorite champions in the m-learning cause, RJ Jacquez, was one of the featured speakers, so I was anxious to listen and learn. During the webinar, while the hosts and featured speakers had their discussion–which I did listen to–there was also a very active chat session going on simultaneously. It was a challenge to keep up with it, but it was just as exciting, nonetheless!

Much of what the chat discussion talked about, as did the webinar, is how those who are developing m-learning materials really need to change the game, that going mobile doesn’t mean just converting regular e-learning courses for a mobile audience. As was said, who is going to look at a smartphone for hours on end watching PowerPoint slideshows go by? Nope, in this transition from e-learning to m-learning, it’s a real opportunity to rethink how e-learning is done for m-learning. iPad or the use of other tablets is not the same as using smartphones, just as mobile learning isn’t the same as learning from a desktop or laptop. As someone from the chat mentioned, with all the different phone and tablet formats, it’s almost like the height of the browser wars again. There are some great software publishers who get this, and some who don’t, understanding that there are so many formats to have to try to deal with, and again the idea of Flash dying a very painful death, this is really at the forefront of many whose job is to make these courseware conversions.

But it’s not just about converting things from Flash to HTML 5 friendly content. It’s actually about the content itself as well. A big point that was made was instructional design and content design are of equal importance right now. As I said before, no one really wants to watch a two hour lecture on their iPhone, do they? Not that it can’t be done, but it’s not very practical now, is it? Content design has to be rethought and redone–in some cases, from scratch–to convey the same information in bit size pieces that are more conducive to mobile formats for mobile devices.

The main thought was that as much as the world hasn’t completely caught onto this idea, e-learning professionals need to get on the bandwagon and truly promote what m-learning really is and “join the revolution”. Software tools are not there, and m-learning thinking isn’t quite there yet. Or at least, it’s not up to par as it should be in various learning arenas (traditional education as well as corporate education).

Or is it?

Shortly after attending this webinar, iTunes sent its weekly email of new and leading education apps. I usually just glance at it, but I noticed something that might have potential. When I opened the description, I couldn’t believe it. There was something there that could act as a model for exactly what those who were chatting in the webinar were talking about.

It was an app to learn Shakespeare’s Hamlet. (Click on the image below, and you’ll be taken to an iTunes webpage about it.)

Evidently, the company that published this app, Mindconnex Learning Ltd., is already on this, and understands what this is about. In this Hamlet app, the original text of the play is broken down into smaller, easier to manage pieces. There are sections that provide analysis and notes, character analysis…the works! It provides the unabriged text along with the learning guides needed to help understand such a complicated work in English literature. Mindconnex also has other apps for other works by Shakespeare, and not only has them created for iPad use, but also for iPhone use. How great is that? Mindconnex Learning has the right idea, and I wish them good luck as they continue to help set a standard for m-learning.

So, the next step seems to be that e-learning professionals have to get on board with m-learning formatting, which is just as much about formatting for the devices as it is formatting the instructional design to make it more usable on those devices.

Will this happen in the near future? Let’s hope so.